Public Relations (PR) can be a very powerful tool to shift perceptions about a company or Brand to align with wider corporate goals and an holistic approach to PR involves much more than simply achieving press coverage.
At the starting point of engagement of PR, clients need to carefully examine what they want to achieve through PR and set realistic goals. A common misconception in relation to PR is that because your company might feel that they have a newsworthy story then surely others, including the media, will feel the same. In most cases this is not so. Journalists are bombarded with requests from the commercial world to try to gain "free publicity" and journalists can immediately spot this and view it as time wasting, thus damaging any potential relationship. Rather, journalists have their own agendas, their own themes that they are working on, their own goals as set by their editors and well engaged PR will recognise this and work to provide a match between journalist needs and company business goals. It is generally easier to achieve coverage in specialist vertical publications, much more challenging to achieve coverage in the high readership daily press but each has a role to play.
Public Relations is often taken to be about the above - develop press releases and have them printed in target publications but in reality the only truely effective approaches to PR take a much more holistic view, after all we are describing company relations to the external world and there are many more potential engagements beyond the press. An holistic approach will tenaciously explore all avenues to bring desired exposure for a client. This would likely involve the following steps:
- Build an understanding of the client Business Strategy and derived tactics, both short term (<12 months) and longer term (up to 3 years). Understand why this planning will likely be successful eg competitive advantage.
- Build an understanding of current perceptions of the client by key stakeholders, how stakeholders would like to perceive the client and how the client would like to be perceived in the future.
- Develop a thought leadership platform to raise messages to a more engaging level
- Develop key spokespeople/person, media trained - armed with key messages which are consistently conveyed. Begin to use language now to position the company for where they want to be in the future.
- Develop external parties (testimonials) to talk on behalf of the company.
- Arrange "meet the press" meetings between target journalists and key spokespeople
- Research ALL avenues for target exposure eg daily publications, verticals, associations, events, committees, internet eg topical blogs to participate in.
- Prioritise opportunities, develop a PR timetable
- Marry sponsorship of key bodies or events with PR to maximise exposure.
- Constantly evaluate effectiveness.
